Chapter 7: Road to the Capital

"The kids should be getting ready to listen to some stories, my wife loves to read to them.” The three followed the children into the wagon, the inside was spacious as it only contained some boxes the wagon itself was two meters wide and three and a half meters in length. 

Inside were five children ranging from the age of five to ten and one woman who appeared to be around her mid twenties making Aion the youngest as Aion, Ban, and Ferdinand stepped inside everyone looked towards them, the first one to speak up was Ferdinand. 

“Mr. Corvidae this is my wife and the previously mentioned brats. Wife and brats this is Ban Corvidae and his grandson Aion they will be travailing with us to the capital.” 

“We’re not brats old man, I'm almost an adult.” The one who responded was the eldest of the children who looked to be about ten years old. 

“Dear don’t worry you will be a fine young man soon enough. Mr. Corvidae, Aion it's a pleasure to meet you I'm Miranda Redmane.” 

“The pleasure is ours Mrs. Redmane” 

“Un, Pleasure” 

Seeing that the his wife was there and feeling the need to get back to his place in the front of the caravan, in case anything happened Ferdinand decided to leave everything to her and turned to Ban. 

“Mr. Corvidae how about we leave the children to my wife and we can go discuss other maters and get better aquatinted.” Ban was felt a little reluctant to leave Aion as he wasn't sure how he would react to different situations but still agreed Because this was also the situation he wanted to put Aion in. 

“Yes let's do that it never hurts to have more friends. Aion stay here with them and don’t cause to much trouble. Mrs. Redmane I'll have to trouble you with my grandson.” 

“No trouble at all, I was just going to begin reading some stories to the children so having him join us would be wonderful.” 

Ban was treating them very politely which would baffle anyone if they knew how powerful he was, as someone who reached the peak of master stage there where only four beings that he knew of that could kill him and one of these was the reason why he didn't just set out to destroy the church of the descended Angel. 

All others at the master stage would not even consider the thoughts of anyone that and yet to reach the master stage, even those that reached the master stage would pose little threat to him as he had reached its peak. But Ban had no intention to do so, as that arrogance would set a bad example for Aion and he had never felt a need no lord himself over others as long as he or his family wasn’t put in any life threatening positions. 

So he followed Ferdinand and left Aion with Miranda and the other children who had stayed silent the entire time. The children had stayed silent for a good reason they were staring at Aion's eyes mystified by their appearance as the pupils constantly swirled making it look like a vortex resided in his eyes. Even Miranda was a bit startled at first but as a merchants wife this was not enough to distract her for long. 

“Now then let me introduce these children the youngest is Ziz she is five years old, next to her is Maz he is six and her older brother they are the children of some of our friends in the caravan.” Miranda had noticed that the children were not going to introduce themselves so she began to introduce them to Aion. 

“Next to him is my daughter Clad she’s seven, and the two over there are Cal he’s just turned seven and Bar who is now ten and the son of our lead guardsman.” Aion had looked at each one as Miranda pointed at them and committed their names to memory after all according to his teacher interacting with them might help him in some way. 

“Aion, three years old.” Hearing him speak Clad broke away from the mystifying feeling of looking into Aion's eyes and resolutely made a declaration. 

“Aion your eyes are strange!” 

“Un” this was his simple reply after all he knew that his eyes were very different from a regular humans, and he had no way to refute her statement or had any need to. 

“Good your honest, papa said that honest people would be good friends for merchants! So we can be friends!” Looking at this exchange Bar began to laugh getting the attention of everyone before stoping and saying 

“Yup we’re all friends now, we were about to listen to Clad’s mom read us some stories, sit here.” As he spoke he pointed at a small box next ho him where Aion could sit to listen to the various stories. After taking his seat Miranda lifted a large book and began to speak. 

“Well we will have to teach you to be less blunt but let’s see about today's stories, now what would you like to hear about?” The book in her hands was actually something many whoe had a little extra money for books would buy for the fact that it contained many tales of the deeds and adventures of Knights and other brave warriors. 

“Mrs. Redmane read the one about the knight who saved the kingdom from the mean beast and married the princess!” The one who immediately answered was Ziz as she loved to here stories that involved princesses. 

“Hm, okay then I'll read that one then two more, after that you kids can continue playing and show Little Aion around.” Miranda then proceed to read the three stories the first was the one that had been requested by Ziz a simple story of a knight who preformed heroic acts and eventually fought an incredibly large beast while atop his mount, a golden winged unicorn.

Finally after all of his heroic deeds he was given the princess to marry, the second story was very similar to the fist with a brave man doing something to help his kingdom and receiving some reward from the king or queen. These stories didn't interest Aion much aside from the fact that these Knights always seemed to find a powerful mount that would guard him and an unmatched weapon to fight enemies much stronger than him. 

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The third story told however did catch his interest as it was a story called the Millennium Rabbit about a rabbit that waited a thousand years for its mother to pick it up and in the end went out into the world and made his own family. 

The story caught Aion’s attention for one reason and that was because he had learned that even someone at the peak of the grand stage would only live about seven hundred years or so meaning that this rabbit had to be at least in the master stage to stop its aging.

This was important to Aion as normal rabbits didn’t contain the blood essence of elemental beasts or the spirits of humans, meaning that it wasn’t completely necessary to have one of the two, as Aion didn’t know whether he would manifest a spirit or not at the age of five this was a very important point. 

But how was he to know that this was just a story to tell children that when they grow up they would have to rely on themselves rather than waiting for their parents. 

Once Miranda Finished the three tales Maz stood up and declared “I will be a knight just like the ones in the stories!” 

Clad on the other hand declared something much different. “Well I’ll be a great merchant so get your things from me!” 

Following this cal also declared his desire to be Knights and Ziz her desire to meet a heroic knight. Bar held his head up high with a smug look on his face 

“Haha well I'm already attending the Variant Blaze Academy, which is just as good as the Royal Flame Academy. I'm already on my way to being a knight!” Variant Blaze Academy was located in the capital but centered more on bringing up commoners as its founder had been one and wished to establish a place where distinction of wealth or blood was not allowed, and was currently ranked fifth among the academies in the kingdom.

As he finished speaking he looked towards Aion, after all everyone knew this and he was hoping to see a nice reaction from someone who didn’t, unfortunately Aion didn’t have the best impression of Knights so all he got was a question from Aion. 

“Stage?” this question surprised Bar because he asked about his stage and not level or rank which would be normal for children his age. 

“In five years relying on my own efforts I've reached the seventh level of the primary rank in the human stage.”  Hearing this Aion was fairly surprised because he was told by his teacher that as far as children went, any at the age of ten or below that had reached at least the seventh level of the primary rank in the human stage would grow up to be a strong person who if presented with the right opportunities would reach the grand stage at least before the age of twenty-seven so Bar had just reached the cut off for it.

The primary rank of the human stage was not a difficult thing to raise in, with the only need being the gathering of elemental energy, this was shown by the fact that every adult regardless of status or wealth was usually at least at the fourth level of the primary rank Of the human stage. 

But to have a ten year old child focus on gathering it while minimizing things like playing and normal social events was hard as well as the possibility of being detrimental to a child’s mental growth If he or she was not mature. Seeing Aion’s surprise Bar was satisfied and spoke again. 

“So Aion what do you plan to do?” To this question Aion was still undecided but had a good idea so he answered. 

“Berserker or assassin.” Hearing his answer everyone present was surprised berserkers and assassins were never the noble heroes of stories, usually playing the part of the villain as berserkers were savages that relied on brute strength and assassins killed people for money. 

To this Clad just laughed “You really are weird” That was all that was said about it as no one asked and Aion didn’t elaborate. Because the caravan was rather slow moving it would take three weeks for them to reach the capital so for following weeks Aion followed the older kids around and spoke more as Clad would force him to explain anything he said and when they played She would also require him to communicate properly with everyone after Ban had asked her to on the second day. 

This greatly pleased Ban as it was his intention to have Aion speak more and be around others his age, so even the delay in reaching the capital was welcome as it gave Aion more time to be around the other children. 

But this was over as they had finally arrived and were standing in front of the capital, Aion was amazed by the sheer size of the city as the walls around it stood an astonishing ten meters tall and three meters thick. Seeing Aion so surprised Ban laughed 

“Aion go say goodbye to the kids from now on we will be living in this city so although we might see them every so often it won't be frequent.” Hearing this he left towards the kids he had come to like in the time they spent together as they were people who treated him kindly and gave him sweets, although Aion had no complaints about the food his grandfather gave him as he could even eat food raw without a problem. 

Sweets were something different altogether and so was some of the food that Mrs. Redmane had given him, it was the first time he had eaten not just to prevent hunger but because he enjoyed it. After a short goodbye and a promise to see each other again Aion and his grandfather entered the capital of Flame Wrym Kingdom, Flame King City. 

The city was separated into five districts North, East, South, West, and Central the Northern district was where the nobles lived, the Eastern District was for the large clans and wealthy merchants, in the southern district was where the merchants bought and sold merchandise, the west district was for the common people, and the central district was for those of Royal blood. This was the city Aion would live from now on and this is the place he was determined to grow stronger in.